Geez, I'm going to be in great shape to help Father C. serve Mass, he thought.

Mike wiggled left, the flashlight beam finding the north wall fifteen feet away. The stone looked black. What the hell-What the heck was he looking for? Mike squirmed and began moving in a circle, checking the dirt for signs of its being disturbed.

It was hard to tell. The stone and dirt floor had been gouged by weather and pawed by generations of the O'Rourke cats as well as other animals seeking shelter here. A few dried cat turds littered the area.

It was a cat or skunk, thought Mike with a mental sigh of relief. Then he saw the hole.

At first it was just another shadow, but its blackness did not diminish with the flashlight beam playing across it. Mike wondered if it was a circle of dark plastic, some tarp or something his dad had left down here. He wiggled four feet closer and stopped.

It was a hole, perfectly round, perhaps twenty inches across. Mike could have gone down it headfirst if he'd wanted to. He did not want to.

He could smell it. Mike blinked away his revulsion and moved his head closer. The stench came out of the tunnel like a breeze from a charnel house.

Mike lifted a stone and tossed it into the hole. No noise.

Panting slightly, his heart pounding so loudly he was sure that Memo could hear it through the floor, he raised his flashlight to the two-by-fours, thrust it forward, and tried to shine a light down the hole.

At first he thought the walls of the tunnel were red clay, but then he saw the ribbed walls, like blood-red cartilage, like the inside of some creature's gut. Like the tunnel in the cemetery shed.

Mike backed away, kicking up a cloud of dust in his retreat, plowing through spiderwebs and cat turds in his panicked flight. For an instant, turning, he lost the rectangle of light and was sure that something had sealed the entrance.

No, there it is.

Mike crawled on his elbows and knees, batting his head against two-by-fours, feeling the webs on his face and not caring. The flashlight was half under his body now, illuminating nothing. Mike thought that he saw more tunnel openings a few yards to his left, under the kitchen, but he didn't crawl that way to find out.

A shape moved into the crawlspace opening, blocking the light. Mike could see two arms, legs with what might be puttees.

He rolled onto his side, lifting the iron bar. The shape crawled half into the opening, blocking the light.

"Mikey?" It was his sister Kathleen's voice, soft, pure, innocent in its slow way. "Mikey, Mom says that you have to get going if you're going to get to church."

Mike half-collapsed in the moist dirt. His right arm was shaking. "OK, Kathy, move back out so I can get through."

The shadow unblocked the entrance.

Heart actually aching from its exertion, Mike clambered through and out. He sealed the panel, pounding the nails through the top of the tin rectangle.

"Gee, you're a mess, Mikey," said Kathleen, smiling at him.

Mike looked down. He was covered with gray dust and cobwebs. His elbows were bleeding. He could taste the mud on his face. Impulsively, he hugged his sister. She hugged him back, apparently not caring at all if she got dirty too.

More than forty people showed up for the "private'' memorial service at Peoria's Howell Mortuary. Duane thought that the Old Man seemed almost disappointed by the turnout, as if he had wanted to keep his brother's final services to himself. But the notice in the Peoria paper and the few phone calls the Old Man had made brought people from as far away as Chicago and Boston. Several of Uncle Art's co-workers at the Caterpillar plant showed up, and one of them wept openly during the brief service.

There was no minister present-Uncle Art had held fast to the family tradition of being militantly agnostic-but short eulogies were given by several people: the co-worker who had cried and who cried again during his talk, their cousin Carol who had flown in from Chicago and who had to return that evening, and an attractive, middle-aged woman from Peoria named Delores Stephens whom the Old Man had introduced as "a friend of Uncle Art's." Duane wondered how long she and Uncle Art had been lovers.

Finally the Old Man had spoken: Duane found it a powerfully moving eulogy-there was no talk of an afterlife or rewards for a life well spent, only the grieved tones of a brother's loss leavened by a description of a personality bowing to no false icons but dedicated to treating other people decently and well. The Old Man ended by reading Shakespeare-Uncle Art's favorite writer-and although Duane expected "And flights of angels bear thee to thy rest ..." knowing that Uncle Art would have appreciated the irony, what he heard was a song. The Old Man's voice threatened to break several times, but he kept going, his voice strengthening by the strange ending:

There were sobs in the chapel. The Old Man had recited the verse without notes or book, and now he lowered his head and returned to his seat.

Someone in the curtain-covered alcove began playing an organ. Slowly, in small clusters or singly, the small group dispersed. Cousin Carol and a few others waited, chatting with the Old Man, patting Duane on the head. The buttoned collar and tie felt alien to him; he imagined Uncle Art stepping into the chapel and saying, "For heaven's sakes, kiddo, take off that silly thing. Ties are for accountants and politicians."

Finally, only Duane and the Old Man remained. Together they went down into the basement of the mortuary, where the powerful crematory furnace was, to watch as Uncle Art was consigned to the flames.

Mike waited until Father C. had invited him over to the rectory to eat their usual post-Communion breakfast of coffee and bagels before talking about the thing in the crawlspace.

Mike had never seen a bagel before Father Cavanaugh started serving them to the few reliable altar boys three years earlier. Now he was an expert, spreading lox or cream cheese with abandon. It had taken awhile to convince the priest that it was all right for an eleven-year-old to drink coffee; like calling the diocese car the Popemobile, it was a secret the two kept between them.

Mike munched on the bagel and wondered how to phrase his question: Father C, I'm having a little problem with a sort of dead soldier tunneling under my house and trying to get at my grandma. Does the Church have anything that might help?

Finally he said, "Father, do you believe in Evil?"